October 14, 2003
Dear Mom and Dad,

Mahym's toy was interesting -- it was barely even a real toy, and had sort of a rushed and on-the-cheap feeling. Rather than two separate toys by both families, they sort of combined forces to have one, small toy. On the girl's night we just had food at our house -- the boy wasn't even there. On the boy's night, Mahym's parents didn't even come. And she cried the whole time. Her new family is very modern -- their other daughter-in-law had uncovered, bobbed (!!!) hair. So at the boy's toy she wore a white dress and sheer veil (they're usually kurteli, totally covered so the bride is just a moving heap of embroidered red) which meant everyone could see her cry (that's a nice side effect of the kurte, she can cry under there as much as she wants). The boy looked pretty uncomfortable. I felt bad for him. He wasn't handsome (looks are considered really important here) but he had a kind face, so I think Mahym'll be okay. It's weird for a scarf and balak-wearing (the extreme of tradition for unmarried girls) village girl to marry into a Russian-speaking family with a bobbed gelneje -- it was kind of funny, our table of quiet, modest village girls watching Russian women in low-cut, slit-way-up-the-thigh dresses and Turkmen women with short hair doing booty dances.

October 18
I can't remember if I've mentioned the Iranian plastic mirror / shelf / caddy things for sticking on bathroom walls. They have big stickers every one always leaves on that say "*Beautiful! *Resisting! *Hygienic!". It makes me think of how that's probably a feminine ideal in many places, which makes me giggle. I think I'm getting weird here. And it looks like I won't be able to take my India vacation next week, so I'm just going to get weirder. Sigh. I'll live.

October 31
Well, India worked out. I'm setting in a decent hotel room, with freshly waxed legs ($2, including tip!), in a cute new outfit ($4), after eating yummy Indian food all day (the entire town we're in is vegetarian -- it's a pilgrimage site), having my palm read, attending a yoga - pranayama - meditation class (where the teacher (uh, sorry, Swami) did a sort of reiki-type healing thing on the chakra at the top of my head because I kept looking worried), and drinking three cups of real expresso, watching that kung fu soccer movie I wrote about like four months ago, in English this time. Can you say bliss?

The first few days in India were pretty stressful. The poverty and garbage freaks me out, and people kept trying to scam us, and we got a lot of attention / harassment on the street. Delhi and Agra especially. Okay, and Jaipur too. But now we're in Rishikesh it's great. The part of town we're staying in is car / auto rickshaw / rickshaw free (there are still scooters) and is separated from the rest of town by the Ganges. You have to cross this huge swaying suspension bridge to get there. And it's in the mountains. It's beautiful. There are tons of tourists, but 80% of them are Indian, which makes me less paranoid about being scammed.

So the palm reader gave me a comprehensive overview of my life. Problems / struggles until my 20's, then starting basically now my "progress time." The good life from 30-60, disease around 60-65, and then I'll die around 70-75. I'll marry around 30 and have three kids. At 40 my life will change totally. I have some sort of major love relationship after my marriage, and I travel and live in tons of different countries (Heidi travels a lot back and forth and stays in her own country; apparently I just sort of wander). I become famous either as a politician or writer (after 30). I have strong willpower, can be selfish, think and plan like crazy, and am somewhat closed minded. I have a good 'business mind', but not yet. And (I knew you'd love this) I should be an engineer. So it sounds interesting. And I'm always doubting that the path I'm on is the right one. I might go back tomorrow to have my aura read.

I dunno what I'm gonna do when I have to go back to Turkmen food. It is Ramadan, I could observe it (most people don't in T-stan -- the other Mary PCV's are thinking about it). It started the 27th but if you travel you're exempt, you just have to make it up later. And it would be so nice to have an acceptable excuse to not eat the stuff (I don't even like) people are always (and I mean always; everyone wants to feed me) trying to feed me.

November 7
Well, so much for that; my first five minutes back at school (10 AM, not a mealtime) two random teachers were trying to pull me into a room -- "Gel! Nan iyeli!" (come! Let's eat food! (Literally nan is bread, but it stands in for 'food')). I wanted to scream. Instead I just giggled and kept walking -- my response when someone's trying to get me to do something and I don't know how to turn them down politely. The giggle is so they know it is a friendly walking away. Probably they all just think I have mental problems, but that's okay.

Anyway it's actually not so bad, because of Ramadan. There's less general eating at school during the day. Nuriya's doing it, and while last year she brought me food anyway, this year I don't think she's going to start. Plus, after she read some of the nutrition books I got for her, she found out that beans are really healthy and vegetarians need to eat them, so she's obsessed with whether I'm getting beans. Last night I ate at her house and instead of potato pirozhki drowning in butter and sour cream I had bean soup and bean-vegetable salad. I love my counterpart. Oh! And in Ashgabat after I came back from India I looked up a picture of mung beans on the internet. Mäs is mung beans! Yay! I don't have to try to sneak two kilos of mash back with me. I can get it at Wegmans. Sweet.

November 8
One of my memories of India is definitely going to be waking up, drinking a liter of oral rehydration salts mixed with fresh pineapple juice in about ten minutes flat (and them tasting good; the med officers always said if you need them bad enough they stop being vile but I never really believed them. Usually I nurse my salts all day -- and have to force myself even to do that), then a liter of water and then another liter of pineapple juice, all within an hour. I was really sick. Better there than in T-stan, though! (Have you guys ever had rehydration salts? They're really, really disgusting.)

Something else that struck me there -- I know I've commented on lots of people here being really thin. Well, in India, more people were even thinner. The kicker is that they still looked healthier than a lot of normal-weight people here. I'm sure it's the variety of food -- would you rather get not enough calories from rice, lentil, veggies and fruit or plenty from bread and sheep fat day in and day out? I see so many people with dry, dull skin, hair and eyes and glazed expressions and I'm sure it's because of nutrition. But how can you tell people their traditional, sacred diet is bad for them and their children? I haven't figured that out yet.

November 12
When I saw my school director today (to update him on my whereabouts for the next few days and to get vacation permission) he complemented me on my Turkmen dress, specifically said it's not tight, and said "Thank you for respecting our traditions." I thought the comment on the looseness of my dress was a little weird, but then after we left Sheker said it was actually a comment on the rightness of her dresses. (She accompanied me to translate and to help me not screw up culturally, etc.) She says she's thin ("You are better than me. I am thin.") and looks bad in loose dresses. Anyway now I'm going to feel weird wearing tight and/or non-Turkmen things to work. Oh well.

November 17
I'm no longer the only American girl in Bäyramaly! I'm now one of four. It's so weird -- it felt weird when Ryan left and I was alone, but this is possibly weirder. The T-12's left yesterday early in the morning, and I didn't leave until 2:00 or so, so I haven't seen any of them and I feel like I should be out looking for them to say hi -- it's so bizarre to know there are other Americans so close and we're all just doing our own thing. It's gonna be really fun though. I'm sure I'll get used to it fast.

I now have a Peace Corps Turkmen-American relative, too -- the PCV in a village outside Mary lives with my host grandma's relatives. That's a little weird too. Now someone might see toy videos where I'm padding my toasts with "Carpe Diem' and "You go girl', etc. In fact, he almost certainly will. I always figured no one else (who'd understand) would see that until I was gone ... oh well.

I just realized that today I'm wearing a tight, non-Turkmen outfit. Oops. Oh well -- at least I've got long underwear under the blouse so you can't see my bra through it! And I'm wearing a huge, puffy blue mohair sweater over it all so no one can tell anyway.

In general I'm having trouble coming up with things to write to you all now. It seems like I've told you everything interesting and nothing else is happening (that I want to tell you about at least. I sort of have a boyfriend now but I won't be sharing much about that). Maybe it's related to winter beginning again -- I have four months of cold and dark ahead. I'm already cold almost all the time, wearing tons of layers all the time, covering myself in blankets in order to sit comfortably in my room.

I'm also to the point where every day is the last one of those days (Nov. 19 or Christmas or Gurbanlyk, etc.) I'll spend here. We're down to less than a year. The other T-11's seem to think I'm weird for looking at every day as the last of its kind -- I think it'll make me appreciate the dark gloomy repetitive dull winder days though -- this is my only November 17th left in T-stan! My students may be obnoxious and I may dream of green salads and driving cars but I will never have another Nov. 17th even remotely like this one, and that makes it ... maybe even downright pleasant. Weird or not, I'm glad I think of it this way, because it makes me treasure every day rather than hibernate mentally and think about how obnoxious my students are.

November 19
Remember my fear of stepping on a frog in our yard in the dark? It happened. And just when my host mom had walked off in my shoes so I was darting from their house to my room barefoot. EW. Läle was right behind me, horrified / delighted all at once. So that's news. And I have giardia again, yay, who knows from what and worse than when I was drinking gazly suw. Other than that, nothing is new. I only have fifty more pages of War and Peace to go. Oh, my creative writing club at School Two is putting together a book of their work! I'm typing it at the Turkish school and I guess I'll pay for the copies out of my salary (although I'm currently broke). I'll give y'all a copy in London.

Nuriya is getting ready to go to the US (in two months). Now that she's actually passed a program, Läle and Sheker are applying too. While filling out one of her applications, Sheker realized she doesn't do any out-of-class activities, made up three clubs, and subsequently had to start actually doing them, which she did on her own while I was in Ashgabat! That is real progress! Läle and I want to do an English center. So things are looking up. My days go smoothly now, and I'm actually busy -- It's taking me forever to finish War and Peace. I desperately need to do laundry and can't find the time, I should re-henna my hair, I haven't been to the bazaar in forever (not that I can afford anything just now). Not because I'm working though -- although actually, I do some work at the Turkish school -- typing, translations, advising. It cuts down on the when's-the-wedding talk. Somewhat.

November 20
Last night I found out that one of our Mary PCV's was in a serious car accident Sunday afternoon. To preserve privacy I won't say who. According to local rules of gender division, the PCV (who I'll call X) should've been in the front seat of the taxi but instead, by some miracle, was in the back middle seat, which turned out to be the safest. The passenger in front died. Also -- the back middle seat is the least comfortable. It's possible PCV X volunteered to take it. Anyway PCV X was med-evacked today.

Something touching is how affected my host family is by the accident. I mean, of course all us PCV's are upset and worried, and people here who knew and worked with this PCV, but my family's only met this PCV three or four times. It's a reminder that we're more important here than we think. I mean, that even when it feels like we're not doing anything much, we might be after all.

Läle just asked me "Aynur is PCV X sleeping in the hospital right now?" I said no, on a plane on the way to America. She said "He/she (okay, I know this is weird but if your guys put it up I don't want to include other people's private stuff) is going to America? His/her parents will see him." My host mom keeps sighing and saying "The little child ..." and telling me to never get in a taxi again. She's afraid.

Anyway, I guess we can all think God it wasn't worse than it was.

November 21
Atash has this horrible hacking cough -- they finally took him to a doctor, who said he needs a bed rest regime in the hospital for a week, and he has a worm. So that some day when we've all come home and are hanging out in the kitchen my host mom starts nagging the poor kid to go carry buckets of water to our washroom and kitchen! So much for bed rest ... yesterday he fell asleep and 7:00 and we spent literally 45 minutes repeatedly waking him up, yelling "Why did you go to sleep without eating dinner?" in his face and forcing him to get up and go eat. He had these huge dark circles under his eyes and of course once we got him up was in an evil mood. I really really wanted to intervene but didn't. Understandings of sickness and health certainly are different here. Then when he starts coughing my host mom freaks out. Not that it inspires us to do any of the things the doctor said to ... we just freak out, then when the coughing fit stops do everything exactly the same as usual, including keeping the kids up late and forcing them out of bed early in the morning. Sigh.
Love, Rebecca